Dear Patty,
I guess I'll assume from what you've mentioned so far that you are working
individually with this particular student and it isn't the problem of having
all of the other students doing 5th grade work and this one student doing K-2
work but that you are asking for techniques to help this individual student
learn more?
My first thought is that you mention that the student has difficulty
understanding "basic facts." One idea might be to cover more than just
arithmetic or symbolic work with the student. Maybe one of the problems is
that he doesn't work well with just notation and numbers but could understand
more using visual representation.
T2T has an FAQ on manipulative which might give you some good ideas:
Using Manipulatives
http://mathforum.org/t2t/faq/faq.manipulatives.html
Another idea would be to "browse" some of the archived T2T answers at the
PreK-2 level to get ideas on how teachers teach concepts at that level:
http://mathforum.org/t2t/browse/branch.taco?level_child=elem1
Varnelle Moore, a kindergarten teacher, has written two primary units on
measurement and geometry that might have some good ideas that you could use
with this student. You will find them here on the Web:
Varnelle Moore's Primary Math Activities
http://mathforum.org/varnelle/
I hope some of these ideas are helpful.
-Suzanne A., for the T2T service